


The Transilience of Liberty

by raspberryhunter



Category: Fringe
Genre: Characters Writing Fanfiction, Crack, Critique probably not disguised particularly well as fic, F/M, Fifth season never really happened, Gen, Humor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-01
Updated: 2015-08-01
Packaged: 2018-04-12 08:52:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,196
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4473050
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/raspberryhunter/pseuds/raspberryhunter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which it is revealed that the entirety of Fringe's S5 comes from the fevered imaginings of a writer with an agenda.</p><p>Or: It's scary how much more sense fifth season makes if you postulate it as in-canon RPF.</p><p>(And in which the rest of the Fringe team critiques.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Transilience of Liberty

**Transit: the prologue**

"I have it," Walter declaimed. 

Astrid didn't look up from her lab bench. "You have the analyses on the biological samples from Bell's ark?" It had been a month since the closing of the bridge to the other universe; a month since the Bell incident, as Broyles called it when he had to talk to them about it at all, which was as rarely as possible. Things were slowly getting back to normal. Well, what passed for normal around the lab, anyway.

"No, silly, the idea for my next magnum opus."

"Your —" Astrid said, looking up despite herself. "Your what?"

"My next work of art. A man's worth is not measured through science alone. No, this will be a novel. It will rival ZFT as an epic for the ages."

Walter was writing a novel? Why? Astrid made an involuntary noise of disbelief. Walter, of course, ignored it.

It will be a dystopia," said Walter in his most resonant voice. "Now I will proceed to provide an overview of the plot, since you wanted to know. The Observers have taken over and are ruling the peoples of Earth with an iron fist —"

"The _Observers_?" Astrid asked, a note of raw incredulity in her voice. "The Observers who mostly stand around and watch events, _hence their name_? The ones who, when they do act, are able to obliterate entire futures? _Those_ Observers? Are taking over because…"

"Because _power_ , the object of power is power, didn't you learn that? What _do_ they teach them in these schools?"

"Basic logic, apparently. As far as we know, the Observers have power over the entire timeline. Why would they even care about twenty-first century Earth? Don't they have other areas to play in?"

Walter frowned at her. "Alice, you're such a spoilsport."

*

**Thought unity: the first chapter**

Walter fairly danced into the room. "Asrael! I have finished the first chapter. Come, let us take a look at it. I know you can't wait to see it!" He extracted a flash drive from his pocket with a flourish and plugged it into the computer.

"I could, actually, wait for quite a while," Astrid volunteered. What was going on in Walter's head this time? Why this sudden obsession?

By this time the words were on the screen, and simply by force of habit Astrid's eyes flicked over them. 

Her eyebrows climbed. "I see that you've got four main characters… Walt, Pete, Olive, and — Astrid? — waking up in amber, twenty years after this invasion you were telling me about…"

"Writing classes always say to write what you know," Walter said modestly, "and so I have done: I named them as I did so I would remember which real-life person each of them was based on. Of course I didn't use their _real_ names, just something very close!"

"Uh-huh. Whatever. So. You… I mean, Walt, in the story… has a plan to save all of humankind. From the enemy."

"The Observers," Walter said helpfully.

"Er, yes. The Observers. Anyway, your main character… um, Walt… has a plan that he developed twenty years previously, before being frozen in amber, that's going to save everyone. Even though he has no way of knowing what might have changed in the past twenty years. And… no one actually knows what the plan is, even Walt, because his memory is all messed up."

"I know," Walter said, a blissful look on his face. "Isn't Walt heroic? Isn't it _brilliant_?"

"That's… one word for it."

*  
**Absentia: the second chapter**

"Hey, Astrid, what're you studying so intently over there?" 

Astrid looked up in alarm. "Nothing," she said hastily, but Peter had already looked over her shoulder. "What's this? _'It is important that you follow the tapes. You must begin this journey right away. You are Humanity's only hope!'_ " Peter broke out in a broad grin. "Astrid, are you writing a book?"

"Um. Not me. Walter."

"Walter?"

"Yeah, do you know why he might be interested in writing a book?"

"No," Peter said with finality. "Not the slightest idea." He paused, clearly trying to feign disinterest, but finally curiosity won. "What's it about?"

"It's a dystopia where the Observers have taken over."

"The Observers? You mean the guys who have so much power over space and time that they're above our puny conceptions of power?"

Astrid groaned. "I told him the same thing. He -- hey!" But Peter had already seized the keyboard and was paging through the document. 

Meanwhile, Olivia had wandered over and was starting to read over Peter's shoulder. "Olive has a daughter 'Etta'? Oh, I see." 

Astrid glanced at Olivia's midsection, which was just beginning to show a bulge. They had, she knew, just found out it was a girl.

Olivia shook her head. "Okay, in what universe would I name my kid Henrietta? Just because some other version of me likes the name Henry, and how did Walter know that anyway —"

"Now, Olivia," said Peter placatingly, "I might have mentioned Henry to him just briefly, with things being the way they are, and I just —"

"Henry?" Astrid wondered. "Who is —"

" _Anyway_ ," Olivia said, forging ahead grimly, "just because another version of me likes the name Henry doesn't mean I like all variants of that name. If she'd named her son Walter —"

"A kid of mine would not be named Walter in any universe," Peter interjected.

"--would I have to name my kid, what, Walteria?"

"Ow," said Astrid.

"Aw, hey, I think Henrietta's a pretty name —" Peter began.

Olivia shot him what Astrid had mentally dubbed the _I Know I'm Irrational About The Other Olivia But You Still Better Not Mess With Me_ look, and he subsided.

*

**The bullet: the fourth chapter**

A couple of weeks later, Peter stared at the computer screen and demanded, "Etta _died_? We — I mean, Pete and Olive — just got back with her!"

"Personally, I think it's one of the better plot twists," said Astrid. "I didn't see that coming at all."

Olivia said, "I don't like it, but I can see it as a dramatic thing — but why would he even write this story, I don't —"

Peter interrupted, crossing his arms, "I am _done_ with this. Just done."

"Don't you want to know what happens next?" asked Olivia, looking more intently at the screen.

"I dunno," Peter said. "I'm -- not really invested in this story any more."

"Oh, you will be," Astrid said grimly. "Look at what Pete does now."

"I don't think —"

Olivia had been reading onward as they spoke. "What?" she squawked. "Pete's doing _what_?"

Peter looked. "Wait, is Pete doing what I think he's doing?"

"If what you think he's doing is injecting random Observer tech into his brain," said Astrid, "then yes."

"Hmm," Peter said, "well, that's actually kind of interesting —"

" _Interesting_?" Olivia demanded. "I think it's awful. Walter's clearly still got father-son _issues_ if he would write that you would do something like that, if you ask me."

"No, no," said Peter, starting to get excited, "look! He's meeting the Observers on their own ground! Turning their own tech against them! It's the first decent idea anyone's had in this book so far!"

"It is," Astrid observed, " _exactly_ the sort of idea Peter would have."

*

**The looking glass: the tenth chapter**

Astrid hoped fervently that Walter never realized how eagerly all of them awaited the next installment of Walter's magnum opus. It had become a bit of a ritual. Every Friday, while Walter himself was taking a nap, they'd grab lunch, sit down at the computer and look at the latest chapter.

"Oh hey, it's Nina!" Olivia said. "Or, I'm sorry, _Tina Flat_."

"Walter is so very clever with the pseudonyms," said Peter dryly.

Olivia frowned. "The novel is getting awfully long. I wonder why he's writing this —"

"Who cares," Peter said, with a passable approximation of lightheartedness.

"Don't we all wonder," said Astrid peacefully. Though Astrid, at least, was not going to invite more of Walter's confidences by asking him. She scrolled down another page. "Tina is certainly being very helpful to Our Heroes."

Olivia's lips quirked, a little sadly. "I suppose she's had twenty years to get over what I, er, Olive, did to her."

Astrid cocked an eyebrow at her: _how's that going?_

Olivia sighed. "Oh well… I suppose she does the best she can." From Olivia, Astrid reflected, talking about Nina, that was a pretty harsh indictment. Or was that the old Olivia Astrid was reflecting onto her? "She can't help making little jabs, saying little things… and then of course I don't want to be around her, and that makes things worse."

She shook her head. "Anyway. You don't want to hear about that," Olivia said, and Astrid knew they were moving on. "Back to Walter's masterpiece here: I wonder why my sister never gets mentioned? Or my niece? Or, um, my nephew? Or anyone connected to us who isn't in Fringe? For that matter, whatever happened to Broyles? Sorry, Bill Proyles. He showed up in Chapter Four and I haven't seen him since."

Astrid scrutinized her; Olivia's eyes were wide and clear, and Astrid thought she'd go along with Olivia's changing of the subject. For now. "Yeah, I'd been wondering if, you know, the narrative was ever going to even mention my dad, or my best friend, or really anyone in my life that I left behind by being frozen in amber for _twenty years_. I mean, wouldn't I have cared about that?"

Peter grinned. "Oh, I'm sure there wasn't room for such _trivial_ subjects!"

"And that's another thing," said Astrid, aggrieved. "No room for the entire uprooting of Olive and Pete and, well, Astrid, and honestly right now all three of them are sitting around not really doing anything — there's no _room_ for them to have any action scenes because of the pages and pages of Walt angsting over becoming… as far as I can tell, the person he actually is right now?" She elbowed Peter away from the keyboard and paged down through the document. 

Peter raised his eyes to the ceiling. "I am completely unsurprised. He's writing a story that the entire _world_ has been taken over, and he manages to make it all about him."

"Wow, there does seem to be a lot here," Olivia said, peering at the screen. She read, " _Walt said to his son, 'I saw a man. Half-starved. And I used him because it suited me. Because he was nothing more than an acceptable loss as long as I got what I needed. Is that who I am, Pete? Is that something you can see coming from my mind? From my heart? Am I the person that would-- leave in the middle of the night on his own?_ '"

"Yes," Peter and Astrid said promptly, in unison.

"He just did that _last night_!" Astrid added indignantly. And, somewhat more temperately, "It was probably an effect of the LSD."

*

**The anomaly: the antepenultimate chapter**

"Tina Flat again!" Olivia exclaimed happily. "Man, she's kicking butt in this scene. I'm not in love with Walter's writing in general, but Tina's pretty great."

"Um," said Astrid. "You might, er, want to keep reading."

"You've been reading ahead again?" Peter demanded.

Astrid shrugged. "Procurer's prerogative. I just wanted to see what happened!"

She watched Olivia's face. She could tell exactly when Olivia started to understand that Tina was doomed, when Tina stood up to the Observers threatening Olive and the rest, when Tina shot herself to save the others.

"Well, that was stupid," Peter said. "Walt and Pete and Olive and Astrid are screwing up everything, for a plan that no one even knows anything about! I mean, Pete's plan looks much better, from my point of view -- engage the Observers on their own turf--"

Peter's plan, Astrid thought privately, had taken up far too much of the book. She said to the others, "Walt's plan preferred over Pete's by Walter's narrative, and the other way around by Peter. Surprise!"

Peter went on, scowling. "And Tina should have known better. She's practically a politician, for God's sake! She survived the Observer takeover… and yet she didn't take elementary precautions —"

"Peter," Olivia said softly, and that was all, but he stopped talking. She said quietly, "It was — well, not the carelessness, but the heroism at the end — it was something Nina would do. I may not remember everything about our life together—" She hesitated. "Or any of it." She swallowed. "But the way Nina feels about me: that's something I know, something that's reflected in everything she says to me, every time we meet, everything the rest of you tell me about her…"

"Olivia," Astrid began, and didn't know how to continue.

"I guess I can see why she's still upset at me, that I don't remember our lives together that led to who she is now," Olivia said. "What it was like, having a child, and having the child torn away — I don't think I really understood that before." She rested a hand on her belly. "You guys… can finish up without me. I'll see you later," she said abruptly, and she rushed out the door.

"Um," Peter said to Astrid. "I guess Walter said we have two more chapters to go — how bad can it get?"

*

**Lives: the penultimate chapter**

Another Friday, another chapter. Astrid retrieved the flash drive from her pack and plugged it in. As she did so, the door opened. Astrid turned to greet Olivia and Peter and saw instead Nina Sharp, dressed immaculately as always, standing in the doorframe.

"Er, Ms. Sharp, can I help you?" asked Astrid.

"Why yes, Agent Farnsworth. I understand from Olivia that the three of you are critiquing a text I should like to see."

Astrid blinked at her in astonishment and a bit of fear. It was one thing to share Walter's blitherings with Olivia and Peter, but with Nina Sharp?

Olivia walked in the room at that instant. "Nina!" Olivia exclaimed, smiling at her. There was a notable lack of tension in the smile. 

Sharp smiled back. "Olivia, dear, after our talk I thought I'd like to see Walter's magnum opus for myself."

"Of course you would," Olivia said, laughing a bit; it was the happiest Astrid had seen her in a while. 

"And where is Peter?" Sharp asked Olivia.

"Dentist appointment."

Astrid, having once again read the chapter ahead of time, thought it was just as well.

"All right, then, we appear to have a quorum. Where is this text I've been hearing so much about? I know the rest of you have been reading along, and Olivia has filled me in on the plot; I'll read this chapter with you and catch up later."

Astrid brought up the next chapter. She sneaked glances at Nina Sharp as they all read; Sharp's eyebrows rose higher and higher, until at the end they were at a place Astrid had almost thought anatomically impossible.

"I see what you mean," Sharp said to Olivia. "It's very... Walter, isn't it."

"In several senses."

"I wonder why Walter has chosen to do this, in this form... well. And the Observers are a strange choice for antagonist, but let us pass that by. I especially like the completely random expositions on parenthood between Walter and Donald. It appears that there is a theme in this work."

"Oh, well. I thought it was moving, at least more moving than previous chapters have been," said Olivia. And Donald being September — that's a nice twist, and I thought Donald was well-characterized. Although bringing in September probably either means the novel's classified or that no one except us is going to understand it at all."

"But none of it makes any _sense_ ," said Astrid, frustrated. She liked consistency in her fiction — tidy mysteries, plotty science-fiction puzzles -- and this did not satisfy in the slightest. "The Observers are supposed to be engineered so they don't have any emotions… but… everything we've seen them do in this novel is emotional, starting with taking over the world and ending with Windmark being all angry at the Fringe team!"

Sharp crossed her arms, tapped her prosthetic fingers against her other arm. "I certainly hope that it's explained why the Observer child walked off the train to be captured by the other Observers. Speaking of that child, I confess to being puzzled as to why he is called a hybrid, when he is clearly described as being a clone. And I don't understand why Donald himself, as positive towards emotions as he is, wasn't flagged as an anomaly."

 _Yes_ Astrid thought, _an ally!_ Olivia and Peter, she had often thought, tended to be more interested in the feelings Walter's book invoked than in critically thinking about what was actually involved in the plotting. Astrid said, eagerly, "And apparently once they took the thing out of his neck he became as emotional as the rest of us, and that's certainly how it worked on Pete, so how does it even make _any sense_ for the Observers' backstory to be all about genetic engineering --"

"Precisely," Nina Sharp said, rising. "I suppose genetics isn't Walter's strong point. Well, I must get back to the office. Lovely to see you, Agent Farnsworth — I suppose we'd better be on a first-name basis now: Astrid, and you must call me Nina." Her voice softened. "And it was lovely to see you as well, Olivia." She nodded at them both and swept out of the lab.

There was a short silence.

"You talked to Nina, huh?" said Astrid, figuring she might as well state the obvious.

"Yeah. We haven't fixed everything, not at all." Olivia gave Astrid a small smile. "But we've made a start."

*

**The fate of liberty: the ending**

Astrid had finally bowed to the inevitable, now that there were four of them looking at Walter's chapters. She'd obtained a projector and cleared off a space on the wall of the lab for a screen.

In any case, Walter had told her, this set of two chapters was "the last installment, the grand finale, the climax, the raison d'etre --" before Astrid was able to grab the flash drive from him and run. In -- celebration? -- Peter had brought sandwiches from the deli around the corner, and Astrid had baked snickerdoodles.

As Astrid adjusted the projector, Broyles walked in. _What's our boss doing here during lunch hour?_ Astrid thought, and had a frantic thought of turning the projector off, before the sane side of her brain argued that a) it was, in fact, their lunch hour, so it wasn't like he could get upset at them for reading it during work hours, and b) Broyles had already seen it, so there wasn't much point in turning it off.

"I take it this is the famous novel?" he said.

"You're a little late, Philip," Nina called. "Though may I say that your character is finally getting a chance to shine in this installment." 

"I'm sorry," Olivia said to Nina, "do I understand correctly from what you just said that you talked to my boss about Walter's novel?"

Nina smirked at her.

"Hey, if you guys are going to read, get to it!" Peter said. "I want to go on to the next page."

There was silence for a while, punctuated only by various people saying, "Next page?" and "Are there any more cookies?" 

They reached the last page of the novel: Pete said, _"I love you, Dad"_ ; Walt walked off into the future forever; the timeline was changed; Olive and Pete were reunited with their daughter. And there the novel ended.

Everyone was still.

"Well," said Astrid.

"Well," said Olivia.

Peter said nothing.

Broyles broke the silence. "It makes no sense that the Observers are the bad guys. Why would they _care_ about taking over Earth? Was this explained in a previous chapter?" 

Astrid looked over to Peter to see if he had any theories on this point. Peter was staring off into space. As far as she could tell, he was not actually aware any of the rest of them were in the room.

"That was the most circuitous way to get to an ending ever," Nina said disapprovingly. "Michael walked into a herd of Observers two chapters ago to get Olive to take cortexiphan so that she could kill Windmark in the final chapter? I am not impressed. Why couldn't Olive just _shoot_ him? Or why couldn't Michael engineer events so that Windmark walked off a cliff?"

Broyles shook his head. "I'm disappointed I didn't get to critique my own heroic death scene."

"We can't all aspire to such heights, Philip," said Nina serenely. "At least you got a heroic torture scene, suffering nobly for the greater good." Broyles frowned at her.

Peter continued to say nothing, very eloquently. 

Astrid looked worriedly at him, and noticed Olivia doing the same. That was a lot of feelings about Walter for him to process, she rather expected: all those feelings nakedly put on screen for everyone to see… _Is he going to explode, or burst into tears, or what?_ she tried to telegraph to Olivia, and Olivia gave her a frown back: _I don't know!_

Nina went on, "The treatment of the Observers was very odd. I thought they were supposed to be genetically emotionless, but instead they are supposed to be contaminated by emotion?"

Broyles said, "I personally found it frustrating in that it was so focused on one or two characters --" Nina laughed -- "but I did like the part where Agent Farnsworth has the realization that saves them all. Very realistic, I thought." Astrid's lips quirked up; she looked down hurriedly. 

Peter's silence was approaching near-deafening levels. Nina had noticed by this point, and was looking between Peter and Olivia with some interest.

"I loved the ending," Olivia volunteered, clearly trying her best to deflect attention from Peter's lack of engagement with the rest of them. "I mean, I laughed at the rest of it as much as anyone, but -- that last scene, where we're bracing for the Observer invasion, and Etta comes back to them instead because they've succeeded in changing the future -- it gave the rest of it meaning. 

"And," Olivia continued, just a touch wistfully, "I especially liked that we got to see the other universe again, that the other versions of them helped them to succeed. I've often thought I'd like to see Lincoln again -- all of them, really."

"How realistic was the plan in the book?" Broyles asked the room at large. "To inject Dunham with cortexiphan to jumpstart her ability to cross over?"

Nina Sharp frowned. "I shouldn't like to do that to Olivia. Walter is correct that the risks are great. I rather think he understated the risk of the subject catching on fire, in fact." Olivia made a face at her. "But there's an idea there..." Nina looked at the ceiling thoughtfully. "I shall have to think about it. There are some avenues towards testing that could be explored... some new work on modeling brain pathways that might be relevant... yes... " She got to her feet. "I thank you all for a most entertaining and provocative lunch hour. Philip, we'll be in touch." Broyles inclined his head, and she left the room.

Peter sighed, and said to no one in particular, "I suppose I know, after all, why Walter wrote that book." He got up, like someone in a trance or a dream, and made his way to the lab door. Olivia followed behind. Broyles raised his eyebrows.

Astrid, under the guise of packing up the cookie crumbs (the cookies having long since been demolished), moved near the door as well. She heard Olivia ask Peter softly, "Are you going to go to him?"

Peter and Olivia exchanged a long look. Peter touched Olivia's cheek, very lightly, in a way he hardly ever did when there were others around. "Yes," he said. "If he could write all that for me —" and stopped, as if he didn't know what to say next.

Olivia said gently, "I talked to Nina, Peter. It was a good thing." Peter nodded, smiling at her; and they went out the door.

Astrid went back to the computer to find Broyles deftly unplugging the flash drive. "I'll take that. Agent Farnsworth, you know Walter shouldn't be using flash drives on government computers —"

Astrid gave him her best _with everything that goes on in here, you're going to go all government-bureaucratic on me about_ that? look. He gave her an utterly deadpan look back. "What," she said, "are you taking that for? Sir."

"I confess all of this --" Broyles looked down at the flash drive -- "is in a sense my doing. I asked Dr. Bishop to brainstorm ways we might be able to contact the other universe. I had no idea it would become, er, this."

Astrid blinked. So there, finally, was the original reason Walter had written the book... Then she shrugged. "Don't tell me you're surprised by it, sir."

"I suppose not." He nodded to her. "Carry on, Agent. Good job with Bishop. The methods are unorthodox as always, but the results are there."

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks (or possibly blame) to sprocket for many discussions of Fringe; noting, "S5 is Walter fanfic!" and then egging me on when I took that to its ~~logical~~ crack-filled conclusion of Walter being the author of said fic; and for betaing the resulting monster.


End file.
